Offices Held

Biography

Edmund Mordaunt’s elder brother was knight of the shire in all three of the Parliaments for which Mordaunt himself represented Bedford, proof enough that he owed his career in the House to his family’s pervasive influence. Of the man himself little is known for certain. His record at the Middle Temple can barely be disentangled from that of at least one contemporary namesake there. Since Edmund Mordaunt ‘gentleman’ was apparently living in 1559 and had a son who was admitted during that year, it is likely that the Member, who did not marry, was the Edmund Mordaunt described in the Middle Temple books from 1553 as ‘senior, esquire’ (a style appropriate to the son of a knight), who on four occasions between November 1551 and December 1554 was one of those from whom the inn’s butler was chosen. In August 1556 a chamber there, ‘late Mr. Edmund Mordaunt’s, deceased’, was vacant: if this was the Member he died intestate, and administration of his estate was not granted until 6 Oct. 1562 when the 2nd Baron Mordaunt, ‘brother ... of Edmund Mordaunt, late of the Middle Temple, esquire’ was declared administrator. Part of the delay could have been due to the misfortune attendant upon his Catholicism which overtook the elder brother after Elizabeth’s accession. Another grant, on 28 June 1592, was made to one of Edmund’s creditors, the 2nd Baron having died in 1571 without completing the administration: perhaps his widow, who died in 1592, had acted for him until this date.4